


Caroline in the Willows

by earlgreytea68



Category: Shenanigans (Original Universe)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 22:18:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11769534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Somehow Nicholas was finding himself having difficulty connecting the dots, between who he had been and who was about to be, even with the dots right in front of him.





	Caroline in the Willows

**Author's Note:**

> When originally we had the idea to put Nicholas with Caroline, I wrote this fic. In which it happens slightly differently than in "Hays Code."

Elliot, having colonized Nicholas’s couch and disdained Nicholas’s offer of a craft beer, was now regarding Nicholas so closely, where Nicholas was sitting on the floor reorganizing his album collection, that Nicholas said, “What?”

“What are you even _doing_?” Elliot asked.

“I don’t know,” said Nicholas. “I’m...organizing.”

“Didn’t you do that last week?”

“I mean,” said Nicholas. “I guess.”

“All you do is keep organizing and you still can’t come up with a reasonable system,” said Elliot.

“The system makes sense to me,” said Nicholas, “and it’s my album collection.”

“Caro and I are going to the Hong Kong,” said Elliot. “You should come with us.”

“Didn’t you two go to the Hong Kong last night?” Nicholas asked.

Elliot shrugged. “It’s not like there’s anything better to do.”

***

Nicholas was starting med school in ten weeks. Nicholas felt like he should have had better things to do. But he didn’t. He could sit around his apartment being nervous that he was about to prove himself too stupid to be a doctor and fail out of school and have to admit all of that to his family, or he could go to the Hong Kong with Elliot and Caroline and watch them sing “Sweet Caroline” a million times and try to get him drunk enough to sing, which was never going to happen.

“But _why_?” asked Caroline, draping herself over his shoulder dramatically. “Whyyyyyyyy won’t you sing?”

“It’s not my thing,” said Nicholas.

It was Elliot’s thing. Elliot was currently on-stage singing an oddly maudlin version of “It’s Raining Men.” Nicholas didn’t even know what to make of that.

Caroline said, propping an elbow on his shoulder and settling her chin on her fist, “What is your thing, Nicholas?”

He glanced at her. She was way too close to see clearly, but he had an impression of her bright eyes and smiling lips.

He couldn’t help that he smiled in response to her. “I don’t know. I guess you haven’t found it yet.”

Caroline laughed.

***

Back at the Hong Kong, and Caroline, fresh from a soulful rendition of “Bring Me to Life,” collapsed into the chair next to Nicholas and pulled over a straw in the scorpion bowl and said, “Is it because you think the crowd would boo you if you sang Blur? Because Elliot is going to prove to you that this crowd would love Blur.”

Caroline swept her arm artfully toward the stage, where Elliot was embarking on “Song 2,” to riotous applause.

“See?” said Caroline.

“‘Song 2’ definitely doesn’t count,” Nicholas said. “They play it at Fenway.”

“They play good songs at Fenway,” said Caroline.

“You are way biased in favor of songs at Fenway,” said Nicholas.

***

Elliot and Caroline, on a Boston street corner in the middle of a muggy summer evening, arguing about the relative merits of “Numb” versus “In the End,” after yet another night at the Hong Kong, and Nicholas leaned his head back against the building behind him and blew smoke up into the light-polluted sky above him.

Caroline said, “What do you think, Nicholas?”

Elliot said, “Nicholas doesn’t have opinions about Linkin Park. Also, how many fucking scorpion bowls does it take to get you to sing?”

Nicholas grinned at Elliot smugly and took a drag on his cigarette.

Elliot said, “Do you know how many scorpion bowls _we’ve_ drunk?”

“Enough,” said Nicholas, “to sing a lot of karaoke.”

“Good karaoke,” Caroline said. “Elliot and I always sing good karaoke.”

Nicholas grinned again and took another drag on his cigarette.

***

Blake’s weekly-monthly parties were a little sad, in this summer after graduation, when so many had scattered. They were coming back, or so they promised: Jane and Hazel and Kate, who were spending summers at home, with family, before coming back to Boston. Evan and Anna, having embarked on an adventure in New York, were not coming back. And Jonah never showed up anymore, even though Jonah was still in town. Nicholas assumed that Jonah had moved on from them, from college shenanigans, post-graduation. Nicholas got the impulse. Nicholas, going to bed every night to Elliot tapping away on his laptop on Nicholas’s couch, waking up every morning to Elliot crashed on the couch, thought that sometimes it seemed like college was never going to end. And just a few weeks ago, Nicholas had thought that would be great, Nicholas hadn’t wanted college to ever end, but now he had med school textbooks piled up in his study room and a new BUMC Facebook page to belong to and somehow Nicholas was finding himself having difficulty connecting the dots, between who he had been and who was about to be, even with the dots right in front of him.

“What’s everyone been doing?” Blake asked, passing a joint around.

Elliot said, “Hong Kong karaoke.”

Caroline said, “Nicholas never, ever sings.”

Blake said, with stoned sincerity, “Nicholas sings in his _heart_.”

***

“It’s weird, right?” Caroline said suddenly, at the Hong Kong as usual, slightly too early so it hadn’t quite gotten going yet. “Is it weird?”

“What?” asked Elliot, concentrating steadily on his scorpion bowl. Elliot was a better performer when he was drunk, which Elliot seemed to know. Nicholas had grown used to watching him pursue scorpion bowls with single-minded ambition.

“Us, coming to the Hong Kong every night.”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Nicholas emphatically. “Yes, it’s fucking weird.”

Elliot stopped slurping at his scorpion bowl, looking between the two of them. “What’s weird about it?”

“I don’t know.” Caroline drew her straw through the scorpion bowl lazily, absently, but with her usual innate grace. Nicholas watched the elegant line of her arm, from shoulder to wrist to fingers. “Should we have better things to do?”

“What’s better than being stars of karaoke at the Hong Kong?” Elliot asked.

“What indeed?” asked Nicholas drily.

“Look,” said Elliot, and gestured at Nicholas with his straw. “If you actually _were_ a star of karaoke at the Hong Kong, you’d be allowed to have an opinion on that. But you never sing, so you’re not a star, hence you can have no valid opinion on how awesome it is.”

“I’m star-adjacent,” said Nicholas. “ _Two_ -star-adjacent.” He slid an arm around each of their waists to give them a squeeze. “Does that count for anything?”

“No,” Elliot and Caroline answered in unison.

***

Elliot and Blake were arguing good-naturedly about whether it would be easier to train a cow or a pig to do tricks, as if that was in any way relevant to anything, and no one had even broken out any weed yet to blame that on.

Nicholas was on one of Blake’s parents’ poolside chairs, trying not to smoke. He was trying to quit smoking. Surely a future doctor should not smoke.

Caroline, on the chair next to him, said suddenly, as if they’d been having a conversation, which they hadn’t been, “ _Should_ we have better things to do?”

“Than this? Yes. Definitely yes.”

“No, I mean--”

Nicholas glanced over at Caroline, catching her frowning, which was an unusual look for her. “Hey,” Nicholas said. “What’s up with that?” and reached out to brush his thumb along her downturned lips.

Caroline turned to look at him, still frowning. “In general. In life. There must be better things to do than what we’re doing. Not just the parties. Not just all the nights at the Hong Kong. Just...in general.”

Nicholas tipped his head at her. Nicholas went to answer.

Except that at that point, Elliot shouted, “Definitely _not_ a _goat_ , Caroline, Nicholas, come tell Blake he is _wrong_.”

And they got themselves embroiled in the pointless farm animal debate, which seemed to be a hallmark of, well, _them_ , Nicholas thought. Try to have a serious conversation, for maybe a minute, and then get sidetracked into a farm animal debate.

Nicholas said that to Elliot, as they Ubered home. “Do you ever wonder if everything we do is pointless?”

“You’re going to be a doctor,” Elliot said. “I am the only pointless thing in your life. And I endeavor to fulfill that role admirably.”

***

Nicholas texted Caroline. _Coffee?_

They met in Harvard Square, and took coffees over to Harvard Yard, and sat on the grass.

Caroline said, “Where’s Elliot?”

“Working,” Nicholas replied.

“So that job’s not mostly fake?” said Caroline.

“Apparently not,” said Nicholas.

“Great,” said Caroline. “Even _Elliot_ has better things to do. Like, when _Elliot_ is suddenly a serious adult and you’re not, you know you’re in bad shape.”

“Elliot is not a serious adult. He crashes on my couch every night, he wouldn’t eat if I didn’t stick food in front of him sometimes, and he survives mostly on coffee and pink drinks. Trust me, you don’t need to worry about Elliot beating you into adulthood. Elliot won’t join adulthood willingly in our lifetimes, probably.”

“I don’t know,” said Caroline glumly. “Everyone’s moving on. They’ve found a purpose. You’re going to freaking med school. Elliot has a job that you need a degree for, instead of some stupid minimum wage barista thing. I’m living with my _parents_ , for fuck’s sake.”

“The only reason I’m _not_ living with my parents is because they are paying for my apartment,” Nicholas pointed out.

“Yeah, because you’re going to be a _doctor_ ,” said Caroline. “If I said I wanted to be a doctor, I bet my parents would pay for me to move out, too.”

“But you don’t want to be a doctor,” Nicholas pointed out. “You want to be a photographer.”

“Yeah, but that’s stupid, though, right? Like, that’s never going to pay bills. I don’t know, we’re not in college anymore. You know?”

“What can I do to help?” Nicholas asked.

Caroline looked up from where she was systematically shredding grass on her lap, and her eyes were obscured behind her sunglasses but her mouth was a round little o of startled surprise. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Look,” said Nicholas, “I am at total loose ends all summer. All I do is sit in my study and stare at my books and freak out. If you want to be a photographer, I can help you pursue your art. I sit here, your willing assistant, ready to haul equipment all over Boston. If it would help.”

Caroline, after a moment, burst into one of her brilliant smiles. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

***

Photography was a lot of things Nicholas had never thought of, a confluence of so many different influences on the resulting image. Nicholas watched Caroline spend forever setting up shots, sprawling on her stomach on filthy sidewalks to get just the right angle, and then take dozens and dozens of photographs, each one seemingly the same to Nicholas’s eye.

But then he would sit next to her as she went through them all, and when she would stop on one, instantly, and sigh happily, he would see it, too: what made this photograph better than the ones all around it on either side.

“Lots of things coming together in a happy accident,” Caroline explained it when he asked, beaming at her favorite photograph of the day.

Nicholas said, “Not at all. You created all of that. It definitely wasn’t an _accident_.”

Caroline beamed at him instead.

***

Caroline took photographs of him endlessly, oddly angled, composed in offbeat ways, catching him in unexpected moments. She would text him the best, at night, and he would scroll through them while Elliot complained about the Property Brothers’ terrible aesthetic. _This one_ , she would text, _or maybe this one_. In all of them, Nicholas thought he looked wry. He texted her that at one point: _Do I always look so wry?_ She texted back, _Yes. It’s a good look._

***

They still went to the Hong Kong. Nicholas still didn’t sing. Elliot and Caroline still sang “Sweet Caroline” way too much.

Caroline, sitting next to Nicholas sipping from the scorpion bowl, smiled at him and mimed taking photographs of him.

Nicholas tried to look exaggeratedly wry.

***

They sat by the harbor at sunset. The Boston Harbor Hotel was screening a free movie outside, and people were crowded in front of the soon-to-be screen, but they sat a little detached, Caroline contorting herself into crazier and crazier angles to get just what she wanted from the sunset and the harbor. Nicholas left her to it, sprawling backwards. His job mostly was to carry the equipment for her. When she was taking photographs, he generally just watched her in fascination.

Now he stared up at the sky over his head, which was darkening inexorably toward navy blue. The days were growing unavoidably shorter, and August was looming around the corner, and his textbooks sat in his study, waiting.

Caroline sprawled out next to him. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“What kind of cheap date do you think I am?” asked Nicholas.

“Hundred bucks for your thoughts,” said Caroline, “but you’d better deliver.”

Nicholas said, “It’s almost August.”

“Hmm,” said Caroline. “I want my hundred bucks back.”

Nicholas chuckled. “I’m...just thinking about the summer ending. And school.”

There was a moment of silence, then Caroline rolled from her back to her stomach so she could look down at him. “You’re going to be an amazing doctor, you know.”

“I have to be an amazing med student first,” said Nicholas.

“You will be.”

“I hope so,” said Nicholas, and looked from Caroline to the sky overhead, even darker now.

Caroline said, after a moment, “I think of photography of being such a scary career choice, no stability in it, no promise of it ever supporting me. But you think being a doctor is the scary career choice, don’t you?”

Nicholas took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I want to be a doctor. I really, really do. I just think...there’s so much opportunity for failure. So many places it could go wrong. Just now, when it hasn’t started, it’s just all...possibility.”

“Right,” Caroline said, “Possibility for _success_.”

“Yeah,” Nicholas said. “That’s exactly how I want to look at it. And I’ll be better when it’s started, and I can actually just... _do_ it. It’s just...scary in the anticipation.”

“Is that why you don’t sing?” Caroline asked suddenly.

It was such an unexpected change of subject that Nicholas looked at her. “What?”

“At karaoke. Do you not sing because it’s scary in the anticipation?”

Nicholas was going to say no, he didn’t sing because he couldn’t carry a tune, but then Nicholas actually thought about it and said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Caroline said, “Sometimes, maybe, you just have to jump in.”

Nicholas looked up at her, silhouetted now against the dark sky, and thought, _Yes_.

***

Caroline, tangled in the weeping willows at Boston Public Garden trying to get the best photograph of the swans, and Nicholas watched her and smiled at the picture she presented.

When she turned her head, whatever she saw on his face made her ask, “What?”

And he heard himself say, “Let me take your picture for a change.”

She didn’t respond for a long moment, and then she silently held out her camera.

He took it, and turned it onto her, and for some reason his heart was pounding, as he focused through the viewfinder, on Caroline’s face watching him, Caroline achingly beautiful in the willows.

Nicholas moved closer and closer to her, progressive close-ups, until he was close enough that the picture was of the summertime freckles dusted over her cheeks, freckles acquired through outings with him, and Nicholas put the camera aside and looked at Caroline, and then Nicholas kissed her.

***

Nicholas, stunned by how much he never wanted to stop kissing Caroline now that he’d started kissing Caroline, staggered with her into his apartment.

Caroline stopped kissing him long enough to say, “Hi, Elliot.”

Nicholas thought, yeah, probably Elliot was on the couch, Elliot was always on the couch, and said distractedly, “Hi, Elliot,” and then kissed Caroline down the hallway and into the bedroom and closed the door and kissed her down onto the bed and kissed her as he got them out of their clothes and kissed her as he sank into her and kissed her as they panted together and kissed her until she threw her head back on his pillow and gasped, “Oh, fuck, _Nicholas_.”

***

Nicholas left Caroline dozing to go in search of water and Elliot said, “Okay, what the fuck, you and _Caroline_? When did _that_ happen?”

Nicholas snagged two bottles of water out of the fridge and walked back into the living room because maybe he should have mentioned this to Elliot but then again maybe there had been no reason to. “I don’t know,” he said. “It just happened, at some point.”

“Clearly,” said Elliot.

“I’ve been helping her with her photography,” Nicholas said.

“She’s still doing that?” Elliot asked.

Nicholas sighed and thought, _Classic Elliot_. “Yes.”

“And this isn’t weird for you?” said Elliot.

“What?” asked Nicholas.

“That I used to _date_ her?”

“You dated her for a few weeks years ago,” Nicholas said. “Why should this be weird? You’re not in love with her. I don’t think you ever were.”

“Are _you_ in love with her?” said Elliot.

Nicholas said, “Probably if I was, I’d tell her before I told you.”

Elliot considered him, frowning. “I don’t know. I think this is weird.”

“You’re living on my couch despite having a perfectly nice apartment of your own a couple of miles from here. I don’t know. There’s a possibility our lives are weird, Elliot. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Elliot. “I...don’t know what to think.”

“Yeah,” said Nicholas. “I think it’s called growing up. And I think sometimes you just have to jump in.”

 


End file.
